The Girl Who's Made of Leaves: Post Apocalyptic Science Fiction

by H. R. Romero

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “It’s a fitting punishment for a monster. to want something so much—to hold it in your arms — and know beyond a doubt you will never deserve it.”

  -Renee Ahdieh, The Wrath, and the Dawn

  Rose doesn’t have to ride in the back anymore, so now she’s sitting in the passenger seat. She loves to watch the trees as they pass by in a hazy blur and the way the roads twist and turn as they travel through the mountains. The major thought it would be safe enough to roll the windows down because the grates over the windows would keep anything bad from getting in, so she presses her face against the grating and feels the breeze blowing on her face.

  The major made it seem like he was letting her do it, so she could look outside, and get some fresh air, but Rose thinks it’s more likely that with the vines growing in her hair, that he wants to be able to shoot her if she were to become dangerous. Right after they left Fort Worth, Rose noticed changes on her arms and legs, which have started to sprout vines too, and she’s kept it to herself. Still, Rose makes the most of the offer to sit in front and look outside. She would prefer to believe that the major is being nice to her, just to be nice to her. Either way, she gets to sit in the front seat.

  “We’re coming to a town, we’ll need to get some gas and see if we can wrangle up something to eat,” says Connors, without taking his eyes from the old logging road they’re traveling on.

  Dr. Valentine and Dr. Shaw are muttering back and forth to each other, but Rose can’t hear what the conversation is about, because of the wind blowing in through the window. Whatever it is, Dr. Valentine isn’t happy about it. Occasionally their voices rise and fall as one or the other gets angry. And once or twice Rose thought she heard her name mentioned. Rose turns to the major and smiles. He doesn’t smile back exactly, but he doesn’t give her a dirty look either. Weariness and worry cover his face, thicker than the layer of dirt and sweat that’s on it.

  Rose doesn’t even know how many days it’s been any more since they left Fort Worth. But it’s been a lot. She wonders if the colonel made it out of the hydrogen plant alive. She wonders if the Devil and her followers were blown up. Everyone is probably thinking the same thing, but no one is saying it out loud. The only thing for sure is there’s been no sign that they were followed. So, Rose takes it as a pretty sure sign… the Devil has returned to Hell and taken all her scary monsters with her when she went. Rose notices though that everyone keeps looking back the way they came for a glimpse of anything red.

  Rose feels the breeze dancing across her face and ears. It makes her hair and, for the lack of a better word, her vines, lift lightly in the updraft. Small buds are beginning to form along the length of them. Occasionally, she’ll feel of them and give them a gentle pinch, and she can feel everything she does to the vines and the buds.

  She soon tires of watching the scenery pass by, and goes back to reading, and finally finishes, the last page of the Bible. There is only one possibility, she realizes, we are living in the time of the Book of the Revelation. What else can explain all the monsters?

  They don’t make it to the town before the gas tank is drained, but hope is on the horizon. Rose can see, off in the distance, a house, and an old barn. An orange tractor sits just outside of the barn, maybe they can get some gasoline from it, or the car parked not far from the house.

  “It’s a side trip, I suppose,” says Connors, reluctantly. He reaches to open the rear doors and leans into the back of the truck to collect two five-gallon gasoline cans. He checks his sidearm and lifts a rifle, slinging it over his shoulder. He shoves an empty can toward Dr. Shaw who reaches out to take it from the major. He follows the major closely as he leads the group toward the farmhouse. They hug the side of the road, moving cautiously along the thicket of tall pines growing like mighty titans.

  Suddenly, Major Connors pulls Dr. Valentine closer into the cover of the trees. Seeing this, Dr. Shaw grabs Rose, pulling her with him, following the others into the tree line.

  “What do you see major?” Dr. Shaw says.

  “The truck’s moving,” Connors says.

  Rose looks out from under Dr. Shaw’s arm which is holding tightly on to her. And she sees for herself that the old truck is rolling slowly along the little farm road.

  The major seems confused. He listens for a few moments and asks if anyone can hear an engine.

  “I don’t hear anything,” says Dr. Valentine.

  Rose crouches down on the rich, pine-needle-covered earth. The needles poke into her knees, but not enough to hurt. The major tells everyone to wait here, and he goes back to the truck and soon returns with the binoculars.

  “What do you see,” says Dr. Valentine.

  “Well, the windshield of that truck is pretty filthy, but I can see two people. Looks like a man and a woman.” Connors lowers the binoculars and tells the group to stay alert, and if anyone sees anything weird to let him know. He shrugs his shoulders and says, “This looks weird as hell. Where would two, old people be going in a broken-down old truck? Dr. Valentine, if anything goes squirrelly down there, you get the kid and get out of here.

  Everyone is trying to get a good look at who is inside the truck. Rose has very good eyesight and can see immediately that the two people in the truck aren’t moving. Something might be wrong with them. She backs away and tells Dr. Valentine that they need to leave, but it’s too late the truck is rolling toward them, and it’s turning so that the driver’s side comes into clear view.

  A Wicked Briar is pushing the truck forward. It has the man in the truck impaled on its foreclaw, manipulating the man like a puppet. It used the truck and the dead people inside as a decoy so it could get close enough to attack.

  “Run!” Connors says.

  Dr. Valentine and Dr. Shaw each pull at one of Rose’s arms, and together they drag her along behind them. Another Wicked Briar burst out from where it, and several others were hiding in a barn. It's an entire nest of the creatures.

  “We’re not going to make it,” says Dr. Valentine.

  The Wicked Briars are quickened with the notion of a feast. They’re slinging long barbed threads in every direction, to slow their prey’s escape. And steadily they surround the group. Rose falls to the ground, and Dr. Valentine nearly falls on top of her.

  The men and Dr. Valentine are firing their weapons. The loud pops of gunfire assaults Rose’s ears. She puts her fingers in them to block out some of the sounds. The monsters are growing closer. The bullets don’t do anything to slow them down. Rose thinks this is the last time she’ll ever see Dr. Valentine because they’re all going to die. It will also be sad not to see Dr. Shaw again, too, because lately he’s been nicer than Dr. Valentine to her.

  The monsters are close enough to tear them into bloody little scraps, but they stop dead still before they make their move. The Turned loom over them, as if to say, checkmate. It has grown quiet, except for the faint ringing in Rose’s ears from the gunshots.

  The Wicked Briars ease away from the group and shift their focus on the road from the direction, Connors, Shaw, Valentine, and Rose had come from. Rose follows their gaze but can see nothing. The Wicked Briars suddenly lose interest and skitter away, and in no time, they are gone from sight.

  “What happened?” says Shaw.

  “They had us, why’d they let us go?” says Dr. Valentine.

  “The Major is scanning with the binoculars again. There’s something out there, but I can’t tell what. It’s using the trees for cover. We most definitely aren’t going back to the truck. We’re on foot from here on out.” The major lowers his binoculars.

  “Maybe we can use those,” says Rose. pointing to the horses, grazing beyond the fence.

  “Horses,” says Dr. Valentine.

  “Shaw,” says Connors, “You and Dr. Valentine head on over to the barn, see if you can find some feed or something we can lure them over with. If not, then see if you can find a lasso or some rope. Be careful.”

  “R
ight,” says Shaw.

  “How far do you think we are from the ship, Major?” says Rose, never taking her eyes off the scary road behind them.

  The ship can be seen in the distance; a massive vehicle coated with a blackened and wrinkled outer skin, veiled in a haze. “I’d say by the look of it, we should be there in an hour or so if we can catch the horses.”

  While the major is keeping watch on the road behind them, Rose decides that she wants to see these beautiful animals for herself. The horses spook a little at her presence and run from her, but soon they settle down and return to sniff at her outstretched hands. The horses sniff the air for danger and step closer to her. She leans over the fence. The wood presses painfully into her stomach, but she doesn’t care. She wants them to come to her. She can smell them now. They whinny and neigh at her. She can feel the softness of a horse’s muzzle on her hands, and then another, and another. She can feel their breath on her face, warm and moist and with a fresh smell of grass. Their scent smells so sweet to her.

  She steps down from the fence just as the doctors are coming back with some rope, they found in the barn. Rose releases the latch which holds the gate closed and it swings out and opens, pretty easily. The horses follow her silently. “They’ll carry us to where we want to go, they told me so,” says Rose. “And I want this one,” she says, indicating a palomino, that on one side looks as a horse should, but on the other, only an image of a horse reconstructed of interwoven vines and green lush leaves. Rose could feel danger growing closer and closer. Something was coming for them. Something bad.

  No one asked Rose what she meant by the horses telling her they would carry them to the ship, and no one, but no one wanted the Turned-horse, so the colonel sat her up on it. There were some bridles, but there were no saddles so everyone would have to ride bareback towards Petit Jean and the crashed ship. A cold, treacherous feeling crept closer and closer. The pressure in the air pressed down until something snapped. Behind them, a cloud of birds, hundreds of them, broke from the trees and took to the air, and following them, a flash of red bled out from the towering pines.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes they win.”

  -Stephen King

  Three minutes. That’s all the time there is, between mounting the horses and the arrival of the Red Queen and what remains of her colony of warriors.

  An impressive Wicked Briar, it’s shell covered in scorch marks, and missing a foreclaw, breaks through a knot of soldiers and stands, panting and heaving, on the front line. The beast is three times larger than the other Wicked Briars which give way submissively, letting it take the lead.

  Orange-peel texture and black soot cover most of the regiment, a result from the intense heat of the hydrogen plant explosion. How the Turned made it out alive is an unimaginable feat of survival, but they are lighter by at least a hundred.

  The Major shouts for everyone to ride, and ride fast. Rose, who’s never ridden before, is frightened by the speed at which her Turned-horse takes off. She screams, startled, but the fear gives way to exhilaration and astonishment.

  Rose chances a quick look over her shoulder and can clearly see the Red Army advancing at break-neck speed. Somehow, she knew the Red Queen wouldn’t easily fall into the trap the Colonel and the Major had set for her. She’s too smart for that.

  The Major has spotted the queen too, and he points her presence out to Dr. Shaw and Dr. Valentine, who dig their heels into the horse’s flanks, and spurred onward, ever faster.

  The Red Army is steadily closing the gap. The Wicked Briars, carrying the evil horde on their backs, are throwing up a whirlwind of dust as they tear after their prey.

  The horses are foaming and snorting and shaking their manes. The winding roads through the mountains are treacherous, and in many places, with no one around to maintain them, they’ve been all but washed away by years of storms and flooding.

  This one time, Dr. Valentine’s horse nearly loses its footing and nearly tumbles off a rocky ledge which overlooks an unassuming valley below, but she’s able to pull the horse away and keep up with the group.

  The mountains tower around them, and the spaceship towers over the monoliths of stone. The shroud of mist which makes the ship appear wraithlike is at last clearing. The outer hull is curved gracefully, and sleek broad-leafed plates are molded and affixed to the black material covering the entirety of the craft itself.

  Rose can see that it has come to rest in a deep chasm, which nature has sliced into the earth which runs through the Petit Jean National Park. The ship makes Rose feel comforted. It’s somewhat like a feeling of homecoming for her.

  The demons are launching spears, and they are dangerously close to hitting the horses. The rumbling of hooves echoes throughout the switchbacks as the chase continues.

  A massive pile of boulders hangs precariously over the very edge of one of the rocky cliffs high overhead. Some of the rocks are as large as houses.

  “Major Connors, do you have another one of those green eggs?” Rose shouts over the galloping roar. She points high above to the boulders which are now beginning to send a small shower of rock chips and sand sliding down the mountainside.

  The Major manages to hold onto the reins and fumble around his utility belt where a small pouch is hooked. He feels each pocket in turn until finally, he pulls a small grenade from one of them.

  “It’s the last one,” he tells her.

  To make this work, he will have to stop his horse so he can throw it. He shouts to Rose, Dr. Valentine, and Dr. Shaw to keep riding, in case this doesn’t work, they still must get Rose to safety.

  There can be no more than a couple hundred yards between the major and the oncoming war party. He pulls up on the reins. His horse slides to a stop, hooves skidding on the road. Connors jumps down from his mount, pulls the pin and hurls the grenade high, where the massive pile of boulders rest. It falls short, ten feet from the heap of stone and then explodes. Nothing happens the rocks stay in place, but they are beginning to lean forward, gravity catching hold of them.

  The Red Queen realizes what the major is trying to do and urges her troop onward as fast as she can. She beats on the hard exoskeleton of the Wicked Briar she rides, with her spear.

  The boulders start to slide and then as if it’s a chain reaction, the entire pile rolls, and summersaults downward, landing between Connors and the Red Queen and her soldiers. A massive wave of dust fills the air, nearly blocking out the sunlight.

  Connors doesn’t wait for the dust to settle. He mounts and catches up with the others, who are waiting just within sight of the boulder-clogged switchback.

  “That’s not going to hold them up for long. We may have only bought ourselves a few minutes. Good thinking, kid,” says Connors, placing a hand on Rose’s shoulder. “That’s another one we owe you.”

  She feels proud, and for the first time in a while, she feels accepted.

  They set off again, not wasting any of the precious time the landslide bought them. The entrance to Petit Jean National Park lies directly in front of them. 3,471 acres of sprawling wilderness lay ahead. The ancient geology of the park is breathtaking. However, the alien ship, filling the canyon, and poking into the sky like a necrotic finger, is all anyone can look at.

  Log cabins built along the canyon’s edge lay scattered as if blown away by high winds. Enormous trees lay down along the rim of the gouge in the earth. Some trees, hundreds of feet tall, span the distance from the edge of the canyon wall and the ship, acting as makeshift bridges.

  “Okay, so, we’re here. Now what do we do?” says Dr. Shaw.

  “Well, Shaw. I don’t care what you do, but as for me, I would rather take my chance by going in there,” Connors points to the alien ship, “than staying out here and waiting for the Turned to catch up with us.”

  “That goes for me, too,” says Dr. Valentine.

  “We came here for the answer. That’s pr
obably the best place to find them,” says Shaw. “We’re not going to find any waiting out here, but the problem is, how are we going to get into the thing?”

  “We can walk across one of those trees,” Rose says, indicating some of the larger pines, which fell just perfectly to make a handful of stable, if precarious, crossing points. “They’re wide and level enough to get across.”

  “Maybe once we get over there we can find something to defend ourselves with when that bunch of Turned shows up,” Connors says as he unbridles the horses and lets them go free. He slaps them each on the flank, and they run off together into the park.

  They decide on one of the tree-bridges, but crossing it is far trickier and more dangerous than anyone wants to admit, but finally, they are standing on the hull of the craft.

  There are large jagged holes spread across the exterior of the vessel, and the Major feels it would be best to try to enter through one of them.

  Tensions are high, and there are only a few bullets, so if there’s anyone or anything in there, Rose hopes it’s friendly.

  Entrance is gained, one at a time, through a place where the floor inside the ship isn’t too far down. Once inside they can all clearly hear beeping and buzzing, and low electrical humming. Dim lights of various colors blink and shimmer throughout the vessel.

  “This ship still has an active source of power,” says Connors. “Everyone keeps their eyes open, and no one touches anything. Understood?”

  No one answers. The experience of being inside an alien ship is overwhelming. Shriveled extraterrestrial bodies litter the corridors.

  “Whoever they were, they were tall,” says Dr. Valentine.

  The bodies are shriveled and dry, like tomato vines culled from a vegetable garden after an early blight.